Multiple Choice Questions

For the unfamiliar (lucky, lucky you!), eharmony starts its "guided communication" with a series of multiple-choice questions you can send to the lucky soul mate that Dr. Neil Warren Clark, founder of eharmony, has personally chosen for you using 29 magical dimensions of compatibility. You send the questions off, hoping for a response from the potential-love-of-your-life in pixels. Answering some of these questions is a problem.

Question 1: "How do you feel about premarital sex?" Wow - I don't even know your real name yet or whether that picture you posted in the Color Me Bad t-shirt was actually from now or from 1995 when you still had hair. I'm guessing this question came to me because I have a religion listed in my profile. But maybe not- maybe this charmer is screening potential women to be sure he spends no more than 30-seconds of his precious online life with someone unwilling to tell a stranger, "I'll immediately bang you harder than a drunk man with a hammer hanging pictures." The alternative seems equally bad - "when two people love each other very, very much, and are wasted on tequila, and when I have a big fat rock on my left hand, then and only then shall intercourse commence." I chose to write my own answer to this, "I believe in passionate monogamy." Apparently I got the answer wrong- he didn't write back.

Question 2: "What in your life are you least proud of?" How is it possible to answer this question? Is anyone really going to say, "cheating on my exams to get into Yale," "that ill-advised threesome that one time in college," "the time I poisoned Johnny the bully's fish?" And if you answer with, "I sometimes love too much," or "I can't multi-task" he'll know you're a big fat liar. I chose to go with, "I'm least proud of when I've hurt my family or friends." Mind you, I didn't say how I hurt them. One of them could be buried in my back yard, or I could have created a fake Craiglist ad for one in the "erotic services" section with their work phone number. That would hurting someone, right? Horrible question.

Question 3: "If no one would ever know and there were no consequences, what would you do?" I don't know- commit grand larceny? Try out being a porn star? Assassinate the president of Sudan? Sing "We Didn't Start the Fire" in front of 1000 people? Burn down the building I work in because someone stole my stapler? What kind of question is this??? The person who sent me this question was a cop. I think he was screening me to see if he'd have to arrest me if it didn't work out.

These questions make me question myself and the sanity of continuing in the online dating charade. They also make me wonder what answers the person who chose these questions could possibly expect. I keep my questions friendly- "do you like pets?" That's a far easier question to answer, unless the answer is, "only for breakfast," or "stuffed on the wall." Luckily, since we've only just begun at this point, I can click "Close Match" and continue my search through the other 12 perfectly chosen absolute and utter soul mates Dr. Warren found for me today. Thanks Doc!